Its Thaksgiving and I've escaped the family to surf the forum for a little while. :lol:

I'm in the process of selling my car and have decided to "downgrade" from my multi amp set up and Alpine DVD player.

At this point, the new set up is running my MB Quart PSD216 components using the Vdrive interal amp from the Alpine 9813. I also added a set of 5.25" Discus series MB Quart coaxial speakers in the rear.

I have to say that I am incredibally impressed with how well the Alpine HU can drive the MB Quart components. The most immediate difference I realized was the "fullness" of the mids has increased. Also, at low to mid volumes, the impact of the midbass has increased substantially. I wasn't expecting either of these to be case. I noticed too that the digital time correction feature seems more "responsive". You can really hear the sound stage move right up to the windshield. When using the remote amp, this effect was noticable, but not as extreme.

The downside of this set up becomes evident at high volume levels. Using the interal amp, the system doesn't get as loud and both the tweets and midrange begin to clip if I really start to push them. When I had the remote amp set up, the tweets would get ear piercingly loud and the midbass was very "snappy" and tight. Don't get me wrong, it gets plenty loud, but not loud enough to have your passenger cover their ears like before. :lol:

I love the 9813's on board EQ and crossover and display. I was forced to bring the tweets up to -1.5dB from -3dB attenuation because of the power drop. I have the signal faded 10 clicks to the front and the comps crossed at 18dB at 63 HZ. The rear speakers are crossed at 100HZ at 12dB. This allows just the slightest "rear fill" that doesn't rob from the sound stage, but does provide some "fullness" if you turn your head to talk to your passenger or whatever. There is zero midbass impact from the rear speakers.

So the verdict is that anybody should be very pleased with running a set of components from the Vdrive Alpine HU's. Unless you did a side by side comparison like I did, you really wouldn't notice the difference. This is a very dramatic increase over the stock Bose system that is super simple and clean to install. I picked up the 9813 for $300 shipped. Add a set of your favorite components and you have a quite an impressive SQ set up for ~$500.

I'm going to add run my JBL 1200.1 to a new Elemental Designs e10 "O" subwoofer in one of my stealthboxes to round out the lower frequencies. This set up will give the 4-ohm ed sub with 600 watts in a .8 ft^3 enclosure, which is almost exactly the recommended power and volume from the ed specs. I'll provide some pics when I get my sub. :thumbs:

Thanks for reading. :cheers:

 

Glad to hear it worked out for you. Maybe one day you will try a V12 :)


MRV-F540 & MRV-T420, both for Mids/Highs
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MRV-F540 controls can be used for bi-amp
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MRV-T420 controls
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MRV-F540 I/O
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